Medical Subject Headings

<p>Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive <a href="/facts/Controlled_vocabulary/JcYKWx3H">controlled vocabulary</a> for the purpose of indexing <a href="/facts/Academic_journal/SBI7Ue0q">journal</a> articles and books in the <a href="/facts/Life_science/9HYkCgqe">life sciences</a>. It serves as a thesaurus of <a href="/facts/Index_term/fRqKUggI">index terms</a> that facilitates searching. Created and updated by the <a href="/facts/United_States_National_Library_of_Medicine/Hzty0MCX">United States National Library of Medicine</a> (NLM), it is used by the <a href="/facts/MEDLINE/B8F9Ajqx">MEDLINE</a>/<a href="/facts/PubMed/JlHAvMHt">PubMed</a> article database and by NLM's catalog of book holdings. MeSH is also used by <a href="/facts/ClinicalTrials.gov/X6WVgItm">ClinicalTrials.gov</a> registry to classify which diseases are studied by trials registered in ClinicalTrials.
</p><p>MeSH was introduced in the 1960s, with the NLM's own index catalogue and the subject headings of the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus (1940 edition) as precursors. The yearly printed version of MeSH was discontinued in 2007; MeSH is now available only online. It can be browsed and downloaded free of charge through PubMed. Originally in English, MeSH has been translated into numerous other languages and allows retrieval of documents from different origins.
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Medical Subject Headings open-in-new

Medical Subject Headings